Biocides, and in particular pesticides such as fungicides, insecticides and herbicides, are important auxiliary agents for agriculture in order to protect and to increase crops. Depending on the various and often very specific needs, a magnitude of actives exist, which show very different chemical structures and behaviours.
Pesticide products may be formulated as liquids, powders, or granules. Solvents, emulsifiers, dispersing agents and wetting agents are normally incorporated into such compositions in order to ensure that a uniform pesticide formulation has been prepared. Successful employment of any pesticide depends upon its proper formulation into a preparation that can be easily diluted with water into ready-to-use mixtures for application onto a targeted pest and/or agricultural substrate. In addition, the market requires additives—so-called “adjuvants”—providing additional benefit to the formulation by increasing the performance of the biocides in a synergistic way. Supply industry offers a wide spectrum of products, especially formulations, intending to fulfil all requirements of the end users. Of particular interest are actives or active compositions working at the same time as adjuvant and solvent, wetting agent or emulsifier.
For example, FR 2758436 A1 discloses an adjuvant composition comprising fatty acid esters, terpene derivatives and emulsifiers. Preferably said esters are obtained from sun flower oil and comprise 1 to 11 carbon atoms in the ester moiety. The emulsifiers may represent non-ionic surfactants, literally cited are ethoxylated fatty acids. U.S. Pat. No. 6,432,884 (Cognis) also refers to adjuvant compositions comprising fatty acid alkyl esters, like for example oleic acid ethyl ester, and non-ionic surfactants, like for example sorbitan esters. International patent application WO 2004/080177 A1 (Cognis) discloses adjuvant compositions comprising fatty acid alkyl esters and a mixture of hydrophilic and hydrophobic emulsifiers.
Although the products found in the market work well there is still a desire to improve their properties. Therefore, the problem underlying the present invention has been to develop new additives for agricultural compositions with the ability simultaneously to improve the penetration of biocides into the plants, to provide higher retention and better distribution of the droplets on the surface of the leaves and therefore to achieve higher adjuvant performance at a lower dosage.